


The Lighthouse in the Stars

by DreamsAreMyWords



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Clexa, Clexmas, Clexmas20, F/F, Fluff, Found Family, Happy Ending, Humor, Stranded, a smidgeon of angst, idiots to lovers, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:02:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28414356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamsAreMyWords/pseuds/DreamsAreMyWords
Summary: It's your typical Christmas rom-com: Clarke gets stranded in a rundown little small town full of gruff locals with hearts of gold, ends up falling for loner Lexa, and together they discover the magic of Christmas.Or: Clarke crashes her spaceship on an unknown planet and meets alien lighthouse keeper Lexa.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 103
Kudos: 543





	The Lighthouse in the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holigays! This is a late work for Clexmas. I genuinely wrote this in like, not even five days all together, so apologies if it's a hot mess! Hopefully it brings a little cheer to the end of this year for you. I hope you all have a happy new year, and that you're keeping safe and healthy. Much love to you all!
> 
> Huge shoutout to my all buddies who helped encourage me with this fic, and especially Slowmo, who read the whole ending to this AS I was actively typing it xD I love you guys so much!

It’s a hard fall from the stars. 

The descent is chaos; nothing but the shrill of alarm bells and the rush of burning machinery and the deafening noise of impact. It’s dumb luck that she manages to shove her helmet on before it happens. Dumber luck that Picasso is in reach, and she can shove him into the chest of her suit before the lights fade and they make the hit. Dumbest luck of all that she somehow manages to survive it, but she supposes that’s nothing new. Story of her life.

It could have been hours by the time she pulls herself free from the wreckage, but by the way the fire roars when she comes to, she thinks not. Her head throbs and she prays she hasn’t squashed Picasso into a pulp as she drags herself on her front, wriggling her way out from beneath a heavy pile of metal. She doesn’t really feel true panic until the moment she realizes she can taste smoke, can feel it burning acrid in her nostrils. She scrambles to feel her helmet, fearing a crack, but it seems it just came loose in the landing; she snaps it shut and gulps down clean air before she resumes her careful crawling. Picasso shifts around inside her suit, tiny feet sifting over her heart, and Clarke breathes a little easier yet. 

She can feel the moment she leaves the bubble of atmosphere still lingering within the confines of her ship. The air is more weightless, suddenly, arms jerking slower as she claws at the ground to pull herself forward, squinting to see through the smoke and chaos. The ground beneath her shifts as she pulls her legs free; sand, perhaps. She can only pray it’s not acidulous diatomite. She wants to think that surely she’s expired the last of her bad luck, but she knows better by now.

She curses when she’s free and able to stumble back far enough to survey the damage. Her ship is... _wrecked_. There is no recovering from this. There may be no recovering for her, either; the fire is high enough in the sky Clarke is sure it can be seen for leagues, and she has no idea what planet she just landed on. She can only pray its hostiles are the slow-moving kind, because if not Clarke is even more doomed than she suspects she already is. 

She spends a long moment just staring at the towering fire, before she hears a pop and a hiss and jolts to attention. It’s her rations going up in flames— they’re a lost cause, but she can see a few key items scattered around the wreckage. She hastily yanks a folded bag from the small slot of her zipper on her thigh and flaps it open, hurrying forward to snatch up the items before the cloying black smoke obstructs them from view. Her body is sore and aching from the crash, but she manages to pick up a few bits and bobs. She goes to take a deep breath and coughs instead, doubling over with her hands on her knees for a moment before finally standing, managing a sigh that comes out more as a groan. What is she going to do? Her radio transmitter was busted. She needs to get the hell out of here, but how? Brow furrowed, Clarke stands there for a time, chewing the inside of her lip as she studies the way the flames lick at the galaxy of stars stretching out above.

Panic lodges itself in her throat when she hears something behind her, the drag of wheels in the sand. She spins around to face it, reaching for the baton strapped to her belt, and clenching her hand into a fist when she realizes it is gone. But when she lays eyes on the thing approaching her, hope surges within her instead.

It’s a droid. Five feet tall, aged platinum and shaped like a box. A circle of lights glitters with life on its chest. It ignores Clarke as it rolls up beside her and settles its wheels deep into the sand, enough to provide a steady grip for it a moment later when it vibrates and then its top splits back for the large nozzle to rise up and take aim. The chemical sprays out thick and fast over the burning ship, and in no time at all the fire is beat away. Clarke listens to the last of the hisses before the fire is gone completely, leaving her ship smoldering and small. Clarke isn’t sure if she wants to cry or curse the universe. This is the second ship she’s lost in less than a year. 

She’s torn out of her thoughts when the droid turns to face her, nozzle tucked back away and top folded shut again. It observes her for a moment, lights blinking, before a series of beeps chime from the speakers on its chest. She doesn’t know much droid at all, but she knows enough to recognize the beeping for the query it is.

“Clarke,” she answers hoarsely, clearing her throat and coughing when her lungs burn. She fumbles up, gloved finger scraping over the button twice before she manages to press it, and relief swells in her chest as she takes in a fresh breath of air. “Clarke,” she says again, sighing it out. “Clarke Griffin. First squadron, hundredth platoon. Arkadia.”

The circle of lights on its chest blink at her for a moment, and then it warbles again.

Clarke squints, her brow furrowed. She flips up the hinge on the sleeve of her suit, frowning when no words flash back at her; of course her translator was damaged in the crash. Because something actually working in her favor for once is just too much to ask for.

“I’m not sure what you’re telling me,” she tells the droid, grimacing when its lights blink and then it beeps again, more insistently this time. “I don’t understand you,” she repeats. “Is your owner around?” When the droid bursts out in loud beeps, Clarke sighs; now she’s offended it. Great. “I’m sorry but I hardly speak any droid at all. Is— do you know anyone nearby who speaks Arkadian?”

The moment the words leave her mouth, it happens. A light so bright and blinding lights up the entire area, and Clarke turns, flinching and lifting her hand to her helmet to shield her eyes. This is it; this is the light that led her here in the first place when her system began failing and the GPS led her on a descent before it went out. It is a miracle Clarke can’t quite wrap her head around. This planet is small and derelict, damn near empty; yet somehow, despite that, it has a functioning lighthouse. And it most certainly saved Clarke’s ass. 

But still. This is unknown territory in her books. She needs to be careful. 

The droid beeps impatiently at her, so Clarke nods and picks up the bag of things she’d managed to salvage before the fire swallowed it up. It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. She slings it over her shoulder, swaying a little unsteadily when it goes farther than expected— it’s going to take a minute to adjust to the gravity shift. She floats in the air when she sets off following the droid and pushes too hard off the ground. The droid’s top snaps open and a cord shoots out, wrapping around Clarke’s leg before she can so much as blink; it yanks her back down to her feet and then recoils, top folding shut again and the droid pushing on its merry way, and Clarke is grateful the thing can’t see how her cheeks burn through her helmet. 

The trek is much longer than it appeared it would be when they first set out. The lighthouse looms out of the gloom, the only light for miles around. When Clarke glances back over her shoulder she can no longer even see the wreckage of her ship. It’s nothing but darkness stretching out in every direction, black sands and an onyx horizon. Even the stars are oddly muted, and when Clarke manages to spy some swirling above she realizes it’s due to dense, low-lying clouds rolling in and obstructing the view. She doesn’t like this planet. Desolate doesn’t even cover it.

The droid beeps again when they approach the base of the lighthouse; it trills excitedly as a shadowy figure comes into view, waiting at the base of the tower. Clarke prays this is a friendly lightkeeper.

She follows the droid up the steep incline, and the figure comes into view. It’s a woman—humanoid in appearance, Clarke realizes with a jolt of desperate relief—standing there with her arms folded beneath her chest, quietly watching their approach. Clarke is wary enough to stop several feet away, even while the droid continues rolling on and wheels to a stop at the woman’s side, trilling eagerly again, vibrating. The woman murmurs something Clarke doesn’t catch and uncrosses her arms to reach down, drift a light touch over the top of the droid. It’s oddly affectionate, and the droid seems placated by it, wheeling away and around the tower out of view, leaving Clarke and the woman to face one another.

“Hello.” Clarke shivers, staring up at the woman with trepidation. She’s hesitant to take a step forward; this being is still swathed in shadow-dust, the only illumination emanating from the way the light reflects off the white of her eyes. Clarke is tempted to wait for the lighthouse beam to circle around again; even though it’s far above them, the glow will reach them. But she can see enough of the woman that she’s almost certain she’s at least partly human. She’s wearing dark lipstick and her hair is wild, interspersed with several braids—but there are small twinkling lights caught in the woman’s hair like stars, and something just feels...off.

Clarke’s brow creases as her gaze darts from point to point— hands seem normal, no cracks or claws, teeth are flat, canines are small. For a moment, relief rolls in waves down Clarke’s spine; the lightkeeper _is_ human. But then the woman steps forward, just as the light reaches them and floods the narrow bridge, and Clarke’s heart stutters in her chest. 

The woman’s lips are not painted with a dark lipstick after all; the darkness is their natural hue. Her skin is ashen, an almost gray pallor. Because of the black blood running beneath it. She’s a…

“Nightblood,” Clarke blurts out, voice oddly warbled again as the static crackles through her speakers. She blanches, both at the fact that she said that aloud, and at being suddenly fixed under the woman’s stare. Clarke swallows thickly and clears her throat. “Sorry. I just...you’re the first one I’ve ever met. I’ve...I’ve read stories about your kind.”

The woman stares at her for a long moment, enough that Clarke grows even more uncomfortable. Her eyes are strange. Gray, in a way, though not the same shade as her skin. Green. Even some blue, perhaps. They’re intense and piercing and Clarke wonders if it’s a characteristic all Nightbloods share. 

“Yes, I am Natblida. Do humans always just blurt out what they are thinking?”

Clarke blinks, taken aback by the natblida’s voice; it’s softer and more feminine than she expected. She also wasn’t expecting to hear flawless Arkadian, only the slightest hint of a rougher accent on the edges of the nightblood’s words. “Uh. It depends on the human?”

“Every human I have ever met has been like that.”

Clarke shifts her weight on her legs. “Well. How many humans do you know?”

“Two. Including you.”

Clarke realizes a beat later that the woman is clearly joking, by the amused tilt of her lips. Clarke smiles despite herself, more in relief that this woman is friendly than anything. “Considering you don’t even know my name, I hardly think you can say you know me.”

“Clarke Clarke Clarke Griffin. First Squadron. Hundredth Platoon. Arkadia.” The woman cocks her head, bemused when Clarke snorts. “Is that not correct?”

“It’s just Clarke.”

“Then who is Griffin?”

“That’s my last name.”

The woman narrows her eyes. “You are making little sense.”

Clarke sighs out a laugh. “Okay. Let me start over. My name is Clarke Griffin, and yes, I hail from Arkadia.” She takes steps toward and extends a hand for the woman to shake. 

The nightblood arches a brow as she inspects Clarke’s gloved hand. After a moment she seems to deem it worthy, and clasps Clarke’s hand in her own, long slender fingers wrapping around the bulky glove. 

“Lexa.”

Clarke waits expectantly for Lexa to expand, but Lexa offers nothing. She shakes Clarke’s hand exactly two times and then drops it.

“What planet is this?” Clarke asks.

Lexa arches a brow again, even higher this time. “You landed on a planet you know nothing about?”

Clarke arches her own brow now, and jerks a thumb behind her in the general direction of her wrecked ship. “Isn’t it sort of obvious that it wasn’t an intentional landing?”

“Nothing is obvious when it comes to your kind.”

“I thought you just implied we all blurt out whatever we’re thinking.”

“That doesn’t mean what you are thinking makes any sense.”

Clarke doesn’t know whether or not Lexa is trying to be funny; she suspects not, and that’s why she bites her tongue to smother her smile. It slides away in surprise a moment later anyway, when Lexa steps closer. Much closer. Clarke could count every eyelash, even in the dim light. She absently wonders if all Natblida are as beautiful as this one.

And as prone to stand so close to a total stranger, just to regard them so intensely. Clarke swallows thickly, though she refuses to drop her gaze, watching as Lexa’s gray-green eyes dart around her face, studying her closely. 

Clarke opens her mouth to ask Lexa exactly what she’s doing, but her own voice is cut off from the suddenly violent shiver she can’t quite suppress. Lexa tilts her head again. 

“Let’s go inside,” she suggests after correctly assessing the reason; this planet is cold, chilling Clarke even through her spacesuit. “You can hold the faya.”

Clarke stands there for a moment, wondering what the hell that means. Lexa has turned her back to her, walking to the door at the base of the lighthouse, and Clarke is curious enough— cold enough— that she follows her.

The first thing she realizes is that the base of this tower is much bigger than she’d imagined. The second thing is that Lexa clearly _lives_ here. Which makes sense, really; she knew lightkeepers often lived on base, but typically they had a home connected to the tower. This is nothing except the tower itself, but everything is here...Clarke can see two doors she’s willing to bet lead to a bathroom and a bedroom, respectively, and there’s a small kitchenette complete with a bar and three stools wedged beneath it; there’s a plump beige couch in the corner and a shelf littered with books; there’s a fireplace with a smoldering blue fire; there are candles absolutely _everywhere_ , and every single one of them is lit, their blue flames casting flickering light along the walls sparsely decorated with the odd hanging plant and various black and white paintings. In the center of everything is a spiral staircase that Clarke is sure leads all the way up to the top of the tower where Lexa tends to the light.

Clarke is so absorbed in taking in the strange little home that she doesn’t notice two things. The first is that Lexa had walked over to the fireplace and scooped a handful of blue fire out with her bare hands; that doesn’t quite register with Clarke until Lexa is walking toward her and comes to a stop, offering Clarke the flame, which she takes with wide eyes, giving a shuddery gasp when warmth floods through her whole body upon the flame nestling in the heart of her gloved palm. 

The second is that there’s another droid in here, and Clarke doesn’t register that until it’s nipping at her leg and she nearly drops the flame on it.

“Ouch!”

“Gus,” Lexa chastises the droid, snapping her fingers. Clarke looks down at the thing and feels her disgruntlement melt away. The droid is small, head hardly reaching halfway up Clarke’s shin. It’s in the shape of a baby duck, all shining bronze, various nuts and bolts and swirling designs etched along its frame. It looks up at Clarke and blinks glowing eyes that resemble wheel gears. “Behave yourself.”

But contrary to Lexa’s words, the droid duck nips at Clarke’s leg again. Lexa huffs and swoops him up into her arms, ignoring his indignant quack as he flaps his metal wings. Clarke notices the G.U.S imprinted on his right wing.

“You said his name is Gus?” she says curiously. Lexa nods as she carries GUS to the couch and drops him down into it. Clarke gravitates toward them, lips quirking as the droid quacks again, outraged, but quiets when Lexa fixes a stern glare on him. “What’s it stand for?” 

“Geospatial Unit Services.”

Tentatively, one hand still cradling the blue flame, Clarke reaches out. GUS pokes her hand inquisitively with his bill, but then stays put as Clarke slowly drags her fingers up the length of it. When she scratches his cheek, the droid practically vibrates in place and makes a trilling sound Clarke can only recognize as approval. 

“He’s sweet,” Clarke smiles, rubbing her fingers along the smooth metal of its head. 

“He’s demanding. Don’t let him fool you. He’ll complain incessantly if you stop petting him too soon.”

Clarke smiles. “Noted. What’s his function? Just company, or does he have a job?”

“He did once. He used to fly between approaching ships. His eyes cast a strong light, so he’d help guide them; the fog can be bad here. But he hasn’t flown in years. I don’t know if he even recalls how to. He’s retired now. He mostly lazes around here.”

“You deserve a life of luxury after all that hard work don’t you,” Clarke cooes, scratching his head and smiling at how he trills. 

Lexa looks between GUS and Clarke, and then steps closer. “Has the faya warmed you?”

“Yes. Thank you,” Clarke says gratefully. “I…” She trails off when Lexa suddenly steps even closer, scant inches standing between them. Her hair twinkles in the blue firelight, and her eyes look grayer than ever; almost as pale as her skin. She has sharp cheekbones and a sharper jawline, but her lips are full and soft— she’s very attractive, and Clarke shouldn’t find it as disconcerting as she does. Perhaps she hit her head harder than she thought during the crash.

When Lexa grows so close Clarke could count her lashes again, a lump forms in her throat, her heart rate spiking and the flame unbearably warm in her now sweating palm. 

“Um— something you should know about humans. We have sort of a...personal bubble.”

Lexa leans back to peer owlishly at her. She frowns. “I don’t see a bubble. Is it transparent?”

“No, no, it was a figure of speech...I meant—”

“Clarke.” Lexa deadpans her. “I was joking. I do understand _some_ of the intricacies of Arkadian, you know.” Clarke exhales, a puff of amused air from her nostrils, but before she can say anything, Lexa continues, “I apologize for invading your personal space. I’m merely trying to assess for any injuries. It looked like a rough landing.”

“You saw it happen?”

Lexa nods, once, before stepping back. Clarke oddly feels as though she can breathe easier. 

“It is difficult to look for injuries when all I can see of you is your face. You do have blood on your forehead.”

“Just bumped it. I’m fine.”

Lexa scrutinizes her dubiously. “Are you not able to take your suit off at all?”

“I don’t know,” Clarke says honestly. “I’ve never been to this planet. You never told me where I am, by the way.”

“This is the Dead Zone.”

Clarke frowns, nose wrinkling. Doesn’t ring a bell. She feels a sinking sense of disappointment. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“You might know it by its old name. Polaris.”

“What?” Clarke stares at her. “Polaris? _The_ Polaris? But I thought…” She doesn’t say it, biting back the words; she doesn’t want to offend her by blurting out that this planet is a shithole and she thought Polaris was a huge, bustling metropolis in the heart of the Trigedakru galaxy.

But judging by the cool, sardonic curve of her lips, Lexa knows exactly what Clarke isn’t saying. “Yes, the one and only. Once this planet was a hub, back when we mined Red. But a century ago, the wells began running dry. There was a war involving the Maunon, who sought using Red to control the reapers— vagabonds and criminals hiding out here, who became hooked on the drug. Eventually the Maunon were wiped out, and most of the reapers thanks to all the Red drying up. Now the planet is mostly abandoned.”

Clarke’s eyes are wide. She thinks of the landscape she’d managed to see during her violent descent; the endless stretch of rocky landscape, the black sea and the dark sandy shores. The lone lighthouse tower, Lexa, and her droids. “Lexa, are you— are you completely _alone_ here?”

GUS chooses that moment to quack obnoxiously, and Lexa’s smirk has Clarke’s heart beating faster again. 

“Hardly,” she says with a quiet laugh that has Clarke wondering if she should press the button on her suit to pulse out more oxygen. “Aside from the ducklings, there’s a town not too far away. Though I don’t know if it’s large enough to even call it that. It has a little of whatever one could need.” Her lips tug up at a corner as she meets Clarke’s eyes again. “Not that we have many visitors here. Especially humans crashing their ships right at my doorstep.”

Her intentions to ask exactly how many droids like GUS Lexa has falls away as Clarke is distracted by Lexa’s last statement— and that smile. Are all Natblida like this? So charming and enigmatic, and she definitely thinks Lexa’s not even intending to be so. 

“It was thanks to your light,” Clarke says, a little sheepish. “I don’t even know what happened. My ship just...I bought it cheap and I suppose that’s what I get. The check engine light came up when I was halfway across the eighth elliptical galaxy neighboring the galactic coalition. I just went for the nearest landing point that popped up on my navigation system, and it led me to you— I mean. It led me here. To this planet.” She busies herself with stepping around Lexa to return the blue flame back into the crackling fire in the grate, and murmurs a thank you to Lexa before resuming, “I saw your light right before all hell broke loose, something in my ship exploded and then I couldn’t see anything, but I was already heading toward the location I’d locked in. So...thank you, for that.” Lexa sits on the couch and gestures for Clarke to sit on the other end, GUS between them. He nudges Clarke’s puffy suit sleeve to demand more pets, and Clarke obliges.

“I saw you entering the atmosphere in a hurry,” Lexa says, voice soft. “I’m glad you came out unscathed.”

“Me too. You were working quite late, weren’t you?” Clarke arches a brow, mouth suddenly dry for some inexplicable reason. “Or are you...do you live here alone? Was there someone else working with you?”

Lexa shakes her head. “I live alone. I share shifts with my droids.”

“Oh.”

“I was on the tailend of my shift when I saw your approach. I didn’t imagine it was because you had a sudden severe craving for the bally bat burgers at Miller’s Wagon Joint in town.”

Clarke smiles slightly at all the unfamiliar words. “No, though it sounds pretty intriguing now you mention it, I’m starving. But with this thing on…” Clarke reaches up to tap her helmet and grimace at Lexa. “Not sure how I’ll be eating anything anytime soon, unless I want to risk immediate radiation poisoning on an unknown planet. Have there been humans here before?”

“Only the Maunon, but radiation poisoning was a huge problem for them and part of what led to war. I’ve only known one other human since then, and she’s the only human living here right now. But she’s been altered.”

Clarke deflates as her hopes are dashed. “Oh.”

“She’s not all cyborg,” Lexa assures her. “Just her spine and one leg. As far as I’m aware, her lungs are still the ones she was born with. She has a respiratory inhaler she uses, both to purify the oxygen and to help with the radiation. It’s late so I’m sure she’s in bed, but in the morning I could arrange a meeting for you. I’m assuming you’ll need to make arrangements for a new ship?”

Clarke nods gratefully, though her stomach twists as she thinks of everything she has to do now. Buying a new ship on an unknown planet is likely to be expensive. Fortunately she has plenty of savings, but...this is so not how she wanted to spend her holiday. Suddenly the events of the day weigh down on her all at once, and she’s exhausted. “Is there an inn or something in town?”

“Unfortunately not, since we so rarely ever have visitors.” Lexa looks at the couch, and then the closed door, and back to Clarke again, making a decision. “You can stay here tonight, if you would like. It won’t be comfortable in your suit, but it would be free.”

Clarke clears her throat, humbled a stranger would offer such a thing. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Lexa lifts one shoulder and lets it fall in a graceful shrug. “I don’t mind. I rarely ever have visitors. It would certainly make GUS’s day.” Lexa presses her lips together, failing to hide how the corners raise. “He seems to like you.”

Clarke looks down at him, hiding her own smile. “Thank you. I’m grateful you were here to help.”

Lexa dips her head in acknowledgement. “In the morning, I’ll have one of the ducklings keep watch here, and I can accompany you to town.”

Clarke looked down at GUS with a raised brow. “How many of these guys do you actually have?”

“Only him. I have many other droids, though. I built most of them, too.” 

“That’s impressive. Though I have to ask...why do you refer to all your droids as ducklings, when GUS is the only one that actually resembles one?”

Lexa lifts one shoulder and lets it fall; Clarke watches the way her hair tumbles over, rich and glossy and twinkling with those miniature stars. “The others get jealous.” 

Clarke grins, amused. “I can imagine.”

Lexa tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

Good grief. Clarke ignores the heat creeping up her neck to touch her face. She needs sleep. “Nothing. Sorry if I’m not making any sense, I think I just need some rest.”

At that Lexa nods and rises to her feet. “We’ll leave early because it’s quite the trek to town, even in my speeder. There you can convene with Raven. She’s the one who can get you whatever you need, be it parts for your ship, or a new ship, or a used one; she’s the resident tinkerer.”

“I thought that was you,” Clarke says without thinking. She grows warm when Lexa’s lips quirk.

“I tinker with my own droids. Raven tinkers with everything, even things she shouldn’t. She’ll have a ship for you in no time.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“You can take my bed, if you would like. I will take the couch.”

Clarke looks up at her, startled. “Lexa, no way. I’m not going to take your bed.”

Lexa looks back at her, equally startled for a moment, before her expression twists into one of regret. “I’m sorry, I— I did not intend to offend. I am not accustomed to human societal conventions...actually to most societal conventions,” she adds in hindsight, a rueful note coloring her tone. She clasps her hands together. “I’m often alone here with my ducklings. I apologize, Clarke.”

“No, no— you didn’t offend me at all. You didn’t,” Clarke says firmly when Lexa looks skeptical. “I only mean that...well, we’re strangers, and you’re already being so kind, inviting me to stay here, period. I’m not going to force you out of your bed too. I’ll be perfectly fine with the couch. I insist,” she adds when Lexa opens her mouth to protest. Lexa snaps it shut and deflates with an exasperated expression. 

“Fine. I...suppose I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

Clarke nods. “See you then. And Lexa— thanks again, so much. I really do appreciate this.”

Lexa nods, the ghost of a smile curving her lips. She scoops GUS up into her arms and she bows her head, murmuring goodnight before she slips off through one of the doors. 

Once alone, Clarke releases a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She flops down onto the couch with a quiet huff and then blinks up at the high ceiling. She watches the blue candlelight flicker and slope across the walls, listening to the sound of the fireplace crackling. What an utterly bizarre day. At the start of it, she imagined she’d be arriving in Arkadia at this time. Tomorrow she’s going to have to ask Lexa if she could borrow a communication device to relay a message to her mother explaining her delay. Hopefully they can also find a place or a mechanism that would enable Clarke to remove her suit; she’s hungry, thirsty, and soon enough she’ll need to release her bladder. Not to mention Picasso is still inside the chest of her suit, curled up against her heart, his legs suctioned to her skin. It’s not going to be a very comfortable night.

But it goes by a little quicker when she’s so exhausted she slips right into a doze. The last thing she hears is Lexa’s distant muffled voice chastising GUS for not settling down and going to bed, and Clarke falls asleep with her lips curved.

* * *

  
  


This planet might be growing on her. 

It could be the strange beauty in the black sands stretching out as far as the eye could see. It could be the huge planets hanging in the sky, beautiful and swirling with colorful gas. It could be the Nightblood sitting between her legs, pressed up against Clarke’s front.

Of course, that’s not quite as exciting as it sounds in her head. The reality is even _more_ so.

She doesn’t know why she was surprised this morning, when the girl who had offered her a place to rest her head after letting her meet her droid duckling and warm up with her faya had woken her up and walked her out to a single-seat speeder that Clarke would have imagined some rich fratster human meathead driving, with a vintage leather jacket and a pair of shades. Lexa offers Clarke a seat behind her and tells her to hold on tightly like it’s nothing before revving the engine and shooting them forward. Clarke wraps her arms around Lexa’s waist, trying her best to remember she has a bulky helmet on so she doesn’t try to tuck behind Lexa and headbutt her with it. 

They zoom over sandy black hills that eventually turn into stretches of brown rocky plains. Clarke can see the distant town from miles away; it’s small and rather downtrodden, a dusty appearance to it that Clarke supposes makes sense, since Lexa said they rarely ever receive visitors here. Lexa parks her speeder next to a skeletal rhinorse that tosses its head and nickers at their proximity. She leads Clarke into a saloon in which all of the inhabitants pause what they’re doing and turn to stare; Lexa shoots Clarke a faintly amused look, and Clarke grimaces. As Lexa said— people aren’t used to visitors here.

“I’m not taking on any more charity cases so don’t even ask,” comes a flat voice; Lexa and Clarke both turn to face the woman standing behind the bar, wiping down pint glasses with a rag. Clarke’s interest is immediately piqued; by the slight softness to her skin indicating a velvety smooth fur, the shock of messy dirty-blonde hair, and the barely-there whiskers framing her brows and nose, this woman is clearly a katgona, and Clarke has never met one, let alone seen one. They’re not nearly as rare as Nightbloods, but still.

“We’re not here for you Anya,” Lexa says easily as she leads Clarke up to the bar. The katgona, Anya, merely narrows her yellow eyes. “I thought we might find Raven around.”

At the words, Anya’s fluffy cat ear twitches, and her expression sours as she drops her gaze to the glass she’s scrubbing. “Why would she be here,” Anya grunts, though there’s a telling pink tinge to her cheeks now. “It’s the asscrack of dawn.”

“Perhaps because she was likely sharing your bed last night?” Lexa says lightly.

Anya’s tail twists in agitation but her face is like stone as she glares down at the mug. “That doesn’t mean I let her stay in it until morning.”

One corner of Lexa’s lips is curved up as she rolls her eyes at Clarke, who bites back a grin. 

And then, like clockwork, another woman appears. They hear her coming first, a thud on every other step, and when she emerges from the door behind the bar, Clarke sees why. Her right leg is composed entirely of platinum.

“Coffee,” the girl grumbles, appearing half asleep as she limps over to the instant coffee maker. 

Anya’s face grows even stonier (and pinker). Lexa smirks before saying, “Good morning Raven.”

“Hey Lexa.” Raven does a double-take when she sees Clarke standing next to her, and all the exhaustion immediately slips away. “Wait a minute! You’re— are you a human?” When Clarke nods, bulky helmet glinting in the light, Raven practically crows. “Do you _know_ how long it’s been since I’ve seen one of my people? Oh, man. I’m Raven Reyes,” she limps over to Clarke, extending a hand. “It’s great to meet you.”

“You too.”

“Come sit down, let’s talk.”

Clarke learns that Raven hails from Arkadia too, though she lived most of her life as a mechanic on Ark Station that orbited it. She’s a firespit of a girl who has lived in the Dead Zone for years now, ever since she crash-landed here herself while on her way to a job fixing ships on Sanctum. Made friends, met Anya, and has been here ever since. It grows on you, she assures Clarke, like a radioactive fungus. 

She offers Clarke a hit of her respiratory inhalant, though she warns her it’ll only keep her safe for an hour, and that’s assuming she kept her breathing at an even level and didn’t exert herself. It’s such a relief to take her helmet off, though she’s sure she looks terrible at this point— helmet hair and blood on her forehead. She thinks that might be why Lexa stares and then quickly looks away, her cheeks paling. 

The air is strangely thick here; Clarke takes in a deep breath and feels it drag into her lungs. But still, it’s a relief to be free from the suit if only for a moment. She unzips the chest and gingerly removes Picasso, who excitedly scurries up her arm and shoulder to dive into the wild tangles of her hair. She chuckles when she sees Lexa staring, Raven laughing, and Anya glaring. 

“If he turns six feet tall in here, we’re going to have trouble.”

“He’s not one of those,” Clarke reassures her, reaching up to carefully untangle him from her hair. “He’s just your basic space lizard. He changes color, and he listens enough if I train him to hit certain buttons in my ship he can do it, but that’s about it. I keep him more for the company.”

Lexa smiles slightly as she watches the little space lizard warble happily and shimmy deeper into Clarke’s hair. “He’s cute. He’d probably get along well with GUS.”

“Probably so,” Clarke agrees, laughing when Picasso vibrates with joy.

Soon enough she and Raven are perched at Anya’s bar nursing glowing bottles of keppleiwoda, which Clarke isn’t sure exactly what it is, but it burns going down her throat and the aftertaste of the alcohol is delicious. Raven is loud and exuberant telling Clarke about how she lost her leg and damaged her spine.

“—so I wandered out of the city and I was in the middle of nowhere when I saw a cute girl. Followed her through the mist. Kissed her. Then a wolf bit me.”

Clarke snorts in incredulity. “You didn’t hear it coming?”

“I mean, I was literally on all fours in its mouth. In hindsight, I did think the ground felt pretty squishy and slimy, but, I mean. I was distracted. Like I said. Cute girl, kisses. Could have happened to anyone.” [x](https://dreamsaremywords.tumblr.com/post/638877710441136128/thecollectibles-art-by-loputyn)

“How did you make it out alive?”

“Made it go boom.”

“What?”

“Oh, I set the fucker on fire.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Hey, I’m kinda hungry and I bet you are too. Want some blackened yujpauna?”

“What’s that?”

Raven chortles. “Oh, friend.” She takes another swig of her bottle. “You’re about to lose your mind.”

The food looks terrible, but tastes delicious, Clarke learns not long after reluctantly digging into a chunk of burned meat. As she makes her way through it, cracking jokes with Raven and smothering grins when Anya tries and fails to be grumpy in the face of Raven and Lexa’s teasing, Clarke can’t help but think Raven might have a point with that whole ‘growing on you like a radioactive fungus’ thing.

After brunch and an early drink (or two), they move on to business. Raven offers Clarke a cheaper option of buying a used ship rather than paying triple the price for a new one, though she’ll have to wait a day or two for the parts to come in. Clarke agrees, resigned to the fact that that’s the only viable option right now. Christmas is in two days, but she knew the moment her ship started going down that it would take a miracle to get home in time. 

_Besides,_ she thinks, propping her chin on her hand and her elbow on the countertop, smothering her smile in her hand as she watches Lexa teasing Anya over her very obvious crush on Raven. There are worse places to be stranded.

* * *

She spends the night at Raven’s. 

She agrees to after Raven convinces her, though she finds herself strangely reluctant, glancing in Lexa’s direction. It makes logical sense; Raven has systems set up in her place to adjust the oxygen and radiation levels to where she doesn’t need a suit or her inhaler. 

But after a day spent with Lexa always in her peripheral vision, Clarke feels oddly crestfallen at the idea of not seeing her for the rest of the night. Lexa is intriguing. She has a funny, dry sense of humor, and there’s such softness in her eyes. She seems young, too. Clarke wonders how she became a lightkeeper. She wonders why she lives alone, only venturing into town every several weeks, according to a disapproving Anya. She wonders why she prefers the company of the stars and her droids over actual people. She wonders who Lexa is and— well. It’s foolish, isn’t it? Because Clarke’s stay here is only temporary. It’s not smart, for her to allow herself to wonder, because that’s going to lead to discovering, and that could lead to attachment, and Clarke doesn’t have time for that. 

And yet still, the next day, Clarke finds a broad smile crawling over her face when Lexa turns up at the shipyard where Raven has brought Clarke to filter through the used ships. Raven is even more surprised to see Lexa, and then snorting when Lexa’s cheeks pale upon her questioning; the way Lexa won’t quite look at Clarke, but then when she does look at her, she can’t quite look away. 

When Lexa tells Clarke GUS has missed her, it’s a no brainer for Clarke to suggest she come over for a visit. They both make it a point to ignore Raven’s gloating smile, now. Clarke is grateful nevertheless when Raven offers her an extra respiratory inhaler, and smirks when she tells Clarke to go easy on the breathing. Clarke’s even more grateful Lexa is already out the door and on her speeder, so she didn’t hear any of that, nor see the way Clarke’s cheeks burn red before she takes a deep breath and ventures out to swing her leg over the speeder and wrap her arms around Lexa’s waist and will her heart to stop hammering. 

Before they return to the lighthouse, Lexa offers Clarke a tour. She takes her to see the whole town...which considering the size of it, takes no time at all. Anya’s saloon is the only bar and restaurant in town. Raven owns the only mechanic shop. There is a small park in the center of town, filled with giant exoskeletons frozen in carbonite and strategically shaped into slides and playground equipment; Lexa says there aren’t a ton of children who live on this planet, but the few who do love to play here. 

They both laugh when Clarke lets Picasso out of her suit and he scurries across the playground, racing up and down the slide; it’s all fun and games until he refuses to come when Clarke calls him, and she has to climb up onto the slide to get him. Then she misses a step coming back down and falls, arms pinwheeling— it’s all very much feeling like slow motion, due to the gravity here, yet Clarke still can’t quite catch herself in time as she falls backwards. She loses her breath as she makes contact, but rather than the ground, it’s Lexa’s body, soft yet firm beneath her own. Clarke blinks down at her, keenly aware of the sensation of Lexa’s arms wrapped around her waist. Lexa blinks back, cheeks paling at their proximity. Clarke can’t quite help the way her gaze dips down to focus on those full, parted black lips.

They both hasten to their feet, blushing and awkward as they pat the black sand from their clothes, avoiding one another’s eyes until Picasso’s muffled screech sounds from Clarke’s suit; it’s a lament and a furious outburst at the fact that Clarke has caught him and forced him to leave the park. She catches Lexa’s eye and they both stifle chuckles, and head back to Lexa’s speeder, Clarke’s heart pitter-pattering as fast as the tiny feet across her heart as Picasso paces around in his rage.

Next Lexa shows Clarke what she assures her is the best place to shop on the entire planet. When they walk into a candle store, Clarke’s not even that surprised. She still throws Lexa a deadpan look, though she’s betrayed by her twitching lips when Lexa bursts into laughter.

The shop is run, almost unsurprisingly, by a candle-man named Wick, who Lexa whispers is the most annoying part of the whole experience, though he has long learned not to hit on her anymore. When Clarke looks at her curiously, Lexa smirks, even as she licks her lips and her eyes dart all over Clarke’s face.

“He is not my type,” she whispers to Clarke where they stand before a huge shelf full of different blue flame candle scents. 

_Who is?_ Clarke thinks, before immediately chastising herself and trying to expel it from her mind. _It doesn’t matter. You’re leaving in a few days._

“Come on,” Lexa says quietly again, gently taking Clarke’s arm to steer her around. She nods in acknowledgement when Wick immediately offers cheery farewells, his waxy blue skin deepening to almost indigo when Clarke shoots him a wave, biting back her laugh when Lexa drags her faster out of the shop. “You’re going to love this next place.”

And though they’ve only known each other not even a full Arkadian day, somehow Lexa is right. Clarke adores the next place she takes her to almost as soon as she sets foot in the door. 

It’s a huge, sprawling library. The ceilings are high vaulted and filled with floating specs that resemble stars against the deep blue backdrop. There are countless books and even, Clarke notices with a gasp of delight that has her seizing Lexa’s arm and dragging her forward, a section dedicated to art supplies. Everything is different here— the trees are not made of wood as the ones in Arkadia are, so the paper is not quite...paper. Clarke has no idea what it is, but she’s certain it would get the job done; she yearns to buy some now, since her own were burned up when she wrecked her ship, but she has none of this planet’s currency, and again—her universal chip was destroyed in the crash. Lexa notices her staring and offers to buy it for her, but Clarke refuses at once, insisting she’s fine when Lexa offers again. 

Eventually they leave, and Lexa shows Clarke a few more buildings, such as the town hall where they pass the planet-wide ordinances, the mine that’s left mostly abandoned now as all the Red has long been taken, and a funny natural formation of calumstones in the shape of a huge spaceship. Clarke meets the majority of the town’s inhabitants. One of her favorites is Emori, a cyprosal with one of her four arms deformed and mangled from an attack by a reaper when she was a child, and her partner Murphy, a sullen twashie with pointed ears and flat dead eyes (though Lexa assures her those eyes are unique to him and not his species); they own the music store, which they stop by so Lexa can buy another chip that apparently she can plug into her home to play music. Lexa eagerly tells Clarke that this disc happens to be a vintage Arkadian one, and her favorite singer. 

Then they head back to the lighthouse, and Clarke’s heart picks up speed again as she wraps her arms around Lexa’s narrow waist.

GUS is indeed pleased to see Clarke again, immediately stabbing Clarke’s shin with his bill to demand her strokes. She laughs at Lexa’s scolding and pets his head regardless, though she does heed Lexa’s request to ignore him during dinner. They eat a delicious pasta made from the native plants here, a type of cactus that’s sweet and rich. Clarke’s suit is draped over the back of the couch, just in case she runs out of her inhalant. She’s wearing Raven’s clothes right now, hers still in the laundry at Raven’s. They listen to Lexa’s new music disc— it’s sung by a human named Celine Dion, and Lexa apparently adores her music.

Afterwards Lexa pours them cups of a drink called Sprit that’s apparently the most delicious dessert on the whole planet, and finally Lexa inquires as to where Clarke was coming from and going to when she crashed on Polaris.

“It’s...kind of a long story.” 

Lexa smiles slightly, gesturing around her home, still glittering with blue flame candles. “The ducklings are covering my shift. I have all night.”

Clarke’s smile tucks away in the corners of her cheeks, and she looks down at her hands, idly tracing a pattern of the soft waldorf iron of the table. “Well...for my full time job, I’m actually a scientist for the Arkadian Council.”

Lexa raised a brow. “You don’t sound too enthused about that.”

“Yeah. I just...I don’t know.” She takes in a deep inhale; lets out a deeper exhale as she leans back in her chair. “I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. To be honest, I went into it more because my parents had. And then, a few years ago, some...some things happened and I lost my dad.”

Lexa’s face creases in sympathy. “Oh, Clarke,” she murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was...pretty horrible,” Clarke says, swallowing at the lump in her throat. She looks at Lexa, who looks back at her with such sorrow in her gray-green eyes, and Clarke feels something she’s never felt before: the urge to keep going. To talk about it. “He was an engineer for the Ark—where Raven worked for a while, oddly enough. Small universe. They were in different sections, though. She worked down in Mecha, and he was in Alpha station. Anyway. He um...there was an accident one day. I was there with him, visiting. The airlock he was in malfunctioned. He tried to fix it, but it...he…” 

Lexa reaches out, soft hand resting on Clarke’s forearm for support. Clarke takes in a slow, shaky breath, her heart kicking faster as she placed her own hand over Lexa’s. Her sun kissed skin was a stark contrast against Lexa’s pale gray. Clarke shot her a grateful look. “He was sucked out into space, and then I had to watch him just...float away. It was horrible. Sometimes I close my eyes and I just...I still see it.” She blinks and there it is. Her father’s body, splayed like a starfish, lit up against the endless backdrop of stars. Anguish swells in her chest and her eyes sting, but when Lexa squeezes her arm again, it grounds her. “So, yeah. I don’t know. I don’t really like working in stations and stuff anymore. I actually...I have this little job on the side now, and I really enjoy it.”

Lexa looks at her steadily. “What is that one?”

Clarke grins. “Spacediver. And a freelance painter.”

Lexa’s brows raise, impressed. “How does that work?”

Clarke downs the rest of her Sprit, licking her lips as it warms her belly. “Well, I travel between the galaxies. Typically spiral and irregular, barred spiral being best, but every now and then I’ll find pods in the elliptical systems too. The best places are the black holes, though.”

“Wow. I’ve never been through those before.”

“They’re...amazing, honestly. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every color you can imagine, and more you can’t. And there are so many animals.”

“Which ones do you paint?”

“Any of them, all of them. Depends on what the person who hired me wants. But usually it’s the flying whales or the blooms of space jellies. Jellyfish,” Clarke adds Lexa looks at her blankly. Clarke grins. “Have you never had darkmatterjam? The glowing purple is the best. It’s delicious.”

Lexa’s eyes narrow. “I thought jam came from crushed fruit.”

“Most of it does. Certain space jellies produce something...similar to it, though, if you milk them. Tug on their tentacles and all that.”

Lexa’s nose wrinkles, and Clarke laughs. She wants to know how Lexa would react during a dive. How her face would light up at the sights, how she’d look framed against the purple and blue and gold and all the other beautiful colors of the galaxies as the whales sailed through the sea of stars around them. It’s a dangerous thought; they just met, and Lexa had a life here, and Clarke had a life there, and it just...wasn’t smart, to crave such impossibilities. “Anyway. I travel to those places, put on my suit, connect to the cord of my ship so I don’t float away, and take a dive. I’m usually working there for weeks at a time, to get the brush strokes following the movements through. So...I haven’t been able to do it very much, since I’m still full time for Ark Council. I basically use my vacation days there to go work my second job.”

Lexa’s brow furrows. “Why don’t you just quit your first job?”

The smile slips off Clarke’s face, and she looks down, picking at a malleable metal fiber of the couch. “Oh, I can’t. My mom would...I mean, I work under her. I’m supposed to follow in her footsteps and become lead one day.”

“But you don’t enjoy it.”

Clarke shrugs. “That’s just life sometimes, isn’t it.”

“It doesn’t have to be, though,” Lexa persists, watching Clarke so closely, how her shoulders tense and she just stares down in resignation. “You already have a second job lined up, and you love that one, don’t you?”

“I do. I mean, sometimes it gets old, having to be on the road all the time. Sometimes you get tired of traveling, and living out of your ship. But it’s good money and I get to travel and see the sights. And I’m not stuck in some station. So that’s worth it alone. Not that it’s a bad thing, working in one place,” Clarke adds hastily, eyes widening as she realizes how her words might have come across; Lexa smirks.

“It’s alright,” she says in amusement. She leans back in her chair, gesturing to her home around her. “I know this is not a life most would want, but it’s...peaceful. I am content here.” 

“Have you always wanted to be a lightkeeper?”

“Not necessarily. I’ve only worked here for the past....four years, now? Before, I was actually a gona for Trigedakru. A warrior,” she adds when Clarke looks at her blankly.

“You were a soldier?” Clarke says in surprise. She casts her gaze over Lexa, studying her in a new light. Lexa’s hands are calloused and strong, her muscles hard and lean, but there’s such a softness about her as well. Even now she’s curled up in her plump couch before her blue fire, her duckling droid curled up on her lap and trilling happily as Lexa pets him, alternating between him and Picasso, who abandoned Clarke to snuggle up next to GUS, who pretends like he doesn’t exist. Lexa is swallowed up in a thick sweater and black tights, wearing thick terrawool socks, and Clarke can’t imagine her in another world, killing someone.

Lexa nods. “I fought against the Azgeda and helped overthrow their corrupt Queen, Nia. She was actually trying to take Polaris for herself, at one point.”

“Wow. That’s...wow.”

“It was a long time ago,” Lexa says, voice quieter now. She looks down at GUS as she strokes his head. “I feel like a different person now. Since…”

“...since?” Clarke says tentatively when Lexa trails off and doesn’t continue.

Lexa’s throat dips, and it still takes her a moment, but eventually she says, “I lost someone special to me in that war. Not long before it finished, actually. Her name was Costia. And it...afterwards, I shut off. It wasn’t a surprising response; I’d struggled with feeling for years before Costia anyway. I don’t know how much you know of our history, but there are not many Natblida left. We were humans once, centuries ago, before Becca Pramheda— the first Natblida— created us with a serum she’d designed. Our black blood protects us from radiation, it helps us filter more oxygen, it helps us heal faster, enhances our reflexes. Sheidheda murdered most of our people before he was killed, and now there are hardly any of us left. I spent my life training for the war, and when I was of age, I didn’t hesitate...and when I met Costia, it changed everything. I saw that there could be more for the first time. After I lost her, it just plunged me back to that dark place before. So I moved back here, even though before I left I swore I’d never be back. But I moved back, and took over the lighthouse. At first I was trying to hide here, but...there’s no hiding in a place so small everyone knows your name. I knew Anya from my childhood, and Indra— she was the bookkeeper you met at the library— actually fought alongside me in the war. We became an odd little family, for lack of a better word. Raven joined us, years ago. Luna, and Lincoln, and Octavia, and Gaia, and Roan, Murphy and Emori, Monty and Jasper— you met all of them too. This planet is small and unwanted, but it’s home, and it’s enough.” 

_Enough…_ Clarke knows how it is, to tell herself that something can be enough. She swallows around the lump in her throat. “I know it’s none of my business, so please, take this with a grain of salt. But don’t you think—”

“I don’t have any salt,” Lexa says, frowning at Clarke.

Clarke huffs in amusement. “It’s a saying.”

“What kind of saying is that? Why would you take a grain of salt?”

“I...don’t know. But anyway, moving on. I get that you’re content here, but don’t you think maybe being actually _happy_ would be preferable?”

Lexa shrugs. “Sometimes I think about traveling. I do miss it. But I have a job here, and I can’t leave my droids alone to do it.”

“Lexa, how often do you actually see newcomers to this planet? I mean for real, before me, how long ago was it that you were able to actually work to guide someone in?”

Lexa considers it; she grows somewhat sulky as she remembers the answer. “Almost two years.”

Good grief. “See? Don’t just...don’t just waste away here. You should do what makes you happy.”

“I offer the same advice to you,” Lexa says coolly. “Perhaps you should quit your first job.”

“Maybe I should,” Clarke concedes, though she has no intention of doing so and disappointing her mother. 

“I know it must seem foolish to you, given your propensity to travel. But I truly am content here, and for me? That is enough.”

Clarke is silent for a moment, absorbing Lexa’s words. Eventually she reaches forward and briefly squeezes Lexa’s arm, smiling when Lexa glances up at her. “It’s not foolish. I just...I think you should do things to make you happy. You deserve it.” Lexa looks away, and Clarke squeezes her arm again. “I mean it. Life should be about more than just surviving. We all deserve that.”

Lexa just looks at her, eyes wide and luminous. Clarke stills, looking right back at her— lost in that gray-green and the warmth fluttering in the pit of her stomach. Lexa’s dark lips are so full and soft and inviting. Clarke reaches for her respiratory inhaler and takes a huge puff from it. 

Lexa clears her throat. “So...were you on your way to a job, when you crashed here?”

Clarke feels the urge to shake her head to clear it. She settles for breathing instead, an unsteady in and out before she summons the strength to answer. “Originally I was supposed to leave to go back to Arkadia in a month’s time, but I finished a commission in Floukru and thought I’d head out early for the holidays.”

“The holidays?” Lexa inquires.

“You know.” Clarke shrugs. “Just trying to make it home for Christmas.”

Lexa tilts her head. “What is Christmas?”

“Well, it has a lot of different names,” Clarke says, remembering the video her father had told her about, something shown to him by his grandfather, and to his grandfather by his own grandfather before him, and so on and so on. Merry Christmas, Merry Chrysler, Merry Crisis; there had been all sorts of names for the holiday back then. “It’s a day of celebration. A holiday.”

Comprehension settles across Lexa’s face, and she nods knowingly. “We have our own version of those here. There is Praimfaya, a celebration of the glorious day in which the first Natblida, Becca, exacted vengeance on her sister after being betrayed.”

Clarke grows solemn, sensing how important this is to Lexa’s culture. “How was she betrayed?” 

“Her sister, ALIE, had declared war on their home planet and destroyed it with balls of faya. When Becca pleaded with her to stop, her sister had refused, and told her that she planned to sell Becca’s soul to Satan for a single corn chip.”

“What is a corn chip?”

“I do not know,” Lexa answers as she stands to lift the kettle from the blue fire. “Legends say it was a priceless artefact.”

Clarke lapses into a thoughtful silence, before asking, “And who is Satan?”

Lexa shrugs again. “This was over a millennia ago, Clarke. Recorded history accounts differ, but according to most, he was an oaf of a man.”

“He was human?” Clarke says in surprise. 

Lexa’s lips twist wryly as she turns and offers Clarke a steaming cup of Sprit. “Humans like to argue against it, but the general consensus among historians is that yes, he was. They suspect he had undergone tests of some sort— he had orange, leathery skin, and people suggest he wore a blonde gerbil as a hat. Apparently he also greedily hoarded all the corn chips, which was why Alie was so intent on trading her own blood for one. But, fortunately, Becca managed to defeat her. She gathered an army of Natblida whose blood fought the effects of Alie’s faya, and beheaded her. And to this day, every seven hundred and forty two days— once a year, on our planet— we celebrate that momentous day by sharing feasts and lighting eternal candles, and we call that day Praimfaya.”

Clarke looks down at her Sprit, awed. “Wow. Well.” She wraps her fingers around the mug handle, brings it to her lips. “Christmas is definitely not a violent tradition.” She purses her lips, blowing on her Sprit. When she notices Lexa’s silence, she glances up to find her watching her; Lexa glances away with paler cheeks, and it makes Clarke’s lips twitch. 

“What is Christmas, then?” Lexa asks quickly, as though eager to resume conversation to slide the attention off herself. Lexa takes a drink of her own Sprit despite how it steams, avoiding Clarke’s eyes. 

“It actually originated on a planet that no longer exists.” Lexa glances up at that, interested. “It was ancient, and inhabited by beings known as Whovians. They were similar to humans,” Clarke adds, anticipating Lexa’s next question; she brings her finger up to her own nose, prodding the tip. “Except they had strange, shrunken noses. One among them was different; he was huge, and only ever wore red suits. His name was Santa Claws. Once a year he would deliver gifts to all the children over the entire planet.”

Lexa’s brows raise. “All of them? At once?” When Clarke nods, Lexa says immediately, “How?”

“They say he would visit them through chimneys— small openings in their rooftops where they would often tend to their fire— er, faya. But honestly, I think these may be myths. I mean, how’s such a big man supposed to fit down those?” Clarke shakes her head, quietly amused with the ridiculous things some people could believe. 

“So Christmas celebrates the generosity of this...Santa Claws?” 

“No, actually...years after Santa Claws died of old age, the Whovians would maintain the tradition by surprising their children with gifts in the morning. But one day, a greedy being— no one knows his name— arrived from another planet and was scorned for the green fur all over his body, so he stole all the presents. But rather than lose their spirits, the Whovians instead sang a song of cheer so pure that his three hearts grew in size, and inspired him to return the gifts, and hence...Christmas was born, and even a millennia or two later, we still keep the tradition alive. We decorate trees, we leave presents underneath them, and we eat cookies.”

Lexa sips her Sprit, fascinated. “How do you decorate the trees?”

“We hang ornaments and popcorn on it.” At Lexa’s intrigued expression, Clarke adds, “Popcorn is—”

“I know what it is, we have it here. It is a delicious snack.”

Clarke nods in agreement. “And it makes for great decoration, too.” 

“Speaking of delicious— what do you think of the sprit?”

“Oh!” Clarke looks down; it’s finally stopped steaming. “I hadn’t even tried it yet. Hang on.” She raises the cup to her lips and takes a tentative sip. Her eyes blow wide in surprise. It somehow tastes like the color purple...but it's delicious. Rich and refreshing. “Oh, wow. It’s incredible.”

Lexa looks pleased, hiding her own smile behind her cup. “I told you. It’s a classic here.”

“I’m glad you convinced me to try it. I guess I’ve traded one classic for another,” Clarke muses. “There are a lot of staples for Christmas. Hot cocoa, eggnog, warm apple cider.”

Lexa tilts her head. “What is your favorite?”

“Probably hot cocoa. Have you ever had it?” Lexa shakes her head and Clarke tsks. “You’ll have to rectify that one day. It’s wonderful. You have had chocolate before, right?”

“Once or twice. It is good.”

“Good is an understatement, but I’ll take it.”

“Are there any other traditions you partake in, on this holiday?”

“Oh, plenty. We put presents underneath the tree, and open them together on Christmas morning.” She leans forward, pressing her lips together to hide the way they try to snag into a smirk as she says her next words, ignoring how her heart beats faster. “We hang mistletoe and kiss beneath it.”

Lexa’s eyes widen momentarily, and her face turns pale. When she chokes on the drink of Sprit she was currently taking, Clarke has the decency to actually feel a bit bad. 

“Isn’t— isn’t mistletoe a poisonous plant?” Lexa manages between coughs. 

Clarke laughs, and eventually Lexa joins in, once she stops choking. Clarke’s heart thrums and she feels the catch of breath all over again; she reaches, almost absently in her preoccupation with the smile lighting up Lexa’s face, for her respiratory inhaler. 

(This might be a problem).

“Are you sad, that you won’t make it home in time for Christmas?” Lexa asks.

Clarke presses her lips together, trying to ignore the warmth in her chest. “A little,” she says truthfully. She smiles at Lexa. “But I’m enjoying this weird little planet, too.”

Lexa smiles back.

(Definitely going to be a problem).

* * *

In an utterly unsurprising turn of events, Clarke runs through the respiratory inhaler Raven gave her sooner than expected. Lexa offers her a ride back to Raven’s, and Clarke clutches onto her the whole ride, praying Lexa can’t feel her heart hammering against her back. 

Lexa hovers at the door, the smile still lingering on her face. Clarke stalls; she doesn’t quite want to go yet. There’s something strange and addictive about time spent with Lexa, as though it passes in the blink of an eye, and it’s not fair.

“Come over tomorrow and I can show you how the lights work,” Lexa offers, since they’d been discussing her job as a lightkeeper, which she’d taken over ever since the last keeper— fleimkepa, as it was known in Trigedasleng— Titus, was eaten by a creature Clarke can only liken to a shark on Arkadia, which makes her even more relieved she’d managed to land on the shore and not in the sea. 

“I’d love to,” Clarke says, ignoring how breathless the words leave her lips. She hopes the crackling speaker of her suit hides it. 

Lexa beams and nods before bidding Clarke farewell. Clarke remains standing out there for a minute longer, after Lexa’s already zoomed off in her speeder, leaving Clarke alone in the quiet stillness of the planet. 

Raven is still up, when Clarke slips back in through the door. There’s a knowing glint in her eye, but some sort of worry clouding them too, so by the time Raven has finished informing Clarke about how the parts she ordered should be in tomorrow and then Raven can set about fixing up her new used ship, Clarke is not altogether surprised that Raven says something before she can slip off to the guest bedroom.

“Clarke,” Raven says, stopping her in the doorway. “Hey, look...if you’re not planning to stick around, maybe…”

Clakre turns around, forehead furrowed and lips tilted down at the corners. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Raven says again, her own brow knit. “I just...Lexa’s a good person, and she’s been through a lot. I just don’t want to see her getting hurt, you know?”

Clarke swallows. “Neither do I.”

“Okay. Just...as long as we’re on the same page.”

Clarke clears her throat and ducks her head and heads to bed. 

It’s going to be _fine_ , Clarke tells herself. She has no intentions to initiate any sort of romantic relationship with Lexa. Clarke is just passing through, after all. She’s not going to let it be a problem.

* * *

It’s a problem.

“I researched into Christmas,” Lexa says the next day, after she picks Clarke up from Raven’s mechanic shop and drives her back to her house for some sort of surprise; Lexa’s body trembles the whole drive, causing Clarke to clutch on tighter to her on the speeder in concern. When Lexa opens the door and ushers Clarke in, she understands why. “I wanted to make the experience as authentic as possible for you.”

Clarke shuffles in, mouth hanging open in astonishment. Lexa’s entire home is covered in Christmas lights, and there’s a large banner stretching across the spiral staircase that says “MERRY CRISTMUS!” Half a dozen droids are squeezed around her circular home, all dressed in varying degrees of holiday cheer— the droid that fetched Clarke from her wreck is wearing antlers, with a glowing red nose on its flat face. One droid has been painted green. Another is tangled up in Christmas lights and appears, by the lights rapidly blinking on its chest, to be alarmed by its predicament. GUS is wearing a red Santa hat on his head.

And in the corner of the room there is Polaris’s form of a tree— which is to say it’s some type of mineral that grows in the shape of a tree, but it’s not the type of tree Clarke knows; it looks more like a barnacle than anything. This tree is about four feet tall and covered in...all sorts of things. Clarke’s eyes are wide and she bites hard on her lip to suppress her growing smile as she takes it all in. There are strange alien figurines hanging from overly large fish hooks, and it looks as though Lexa has just dumped an entire bowl of popcorn on the tree; half of it is scattered along the floor beneath it. Even as Clarke stares at it, Lexa bends down to grasp a handful. 

“It does not seem to make much sense to decorate a tree with popcorn,” Lexa muses, eyes narrowed as she carefully places one piece atop a branch with long, delicate fingers. 

Clarke smirks. “Don’t be such a Grinch, Lexa.”

Lexa shoots her a puzzled look. “What is a Grinch?"

Clarke thinks about it, and then shrugs. “Actually, I don’t know. Just something that hates on Christmas, I guess.”

When the popcorn piece Lexa had just placed falls off, Lexa snatches it out of mid-air and sighs before popping it into her mouth. Clarke’s guffaw escapes before she can stop it.

God, she’s just adorable.

(This is _such_ a problem).

“Lexa, this is _amazing_ ,” Clarke marvels. “You did all this for me?”

Lexa’s cheeks pale; the tips of her ears are very nearly as white as a ghost. “I didn’t want you to miss out on Christmas.”

“Thank you. So much.” Without a second thought, Clarke wraps her arms around Lexa’s neck and pulls her into a hug. Lexa is stiff in her arms for a moment, and right before Clarke makes to pull back, Lexa wraps her own arms around Clarke’s waist and returns her embrace. 

“You’re welcome,” Lexa murmurs. 

She smells so good, though Clarke can’t give a name to what exactly she smells like. It’s too familiar to this planet and foreign to Clarke’s own. It has her nuzzling her nose into Lexa’s hair, breathing it in. It’s only when she realizes how intimate this is that she finally jerks back, taking one then two large steps back until there’s enough space between them that Clarke can breathe. She takes a huff of the respiratory inhaler Raven gave her just to be safe anyway, though she curses when she realizes it’s low; she forgot to ask Raven if she had any spare ones before she left. 

Lexa licks her lips as she looks away, ears pale again; Clarke notices how her tongue is dark, too. It looks like Clarke’s did once as a child, when she and Wells broke into the state gardens and ate their fill of supersonic iceberries. She’d enjoyed sticking her tongue out to startle the other students. It took nearly a full two days for it to fade. 

“Here. This is for you.”

Clarke’s brows shoot to her hairline when Lexa reaches down to grab the present that was crammed beneath the tree. It’s been carefully wrapped in...it appears to be some type of shedded animal skin; it looks like it’s a thick snake skin, though Clarke knows it would be some other creature she can’t even imagine. She bites back her grin as she gingerly takes it in her own hands, and carefully unwraps it, the skin falling apart in her hands. When she recognizing the item, her heart leaps. 

“Oh, wow! Thank you so much,” she enthuses, beaming the same way Lexa does as she lifts the canvas and box of drawing utensils. She’s so busy inspecting the box, wondering what Arkadian utensils they relate to, that she doesn’t notice Lexa has retrieved something else until she speaks again.

“And here.”

Clarke looks up, and her eyes widen when she sees what Lexa is holding above her. It’s a piece of that strangely thick Polaris paper, clearly ripped out of a book. There is a picture of mistletoe on it. 

“We don’t have it on this planet,” Lexa explains, her cheeks and ears pale, “so I risked Indra’s wrath by ripping this out of a library book.”

Clarke’s stomach flips and her heart thunders; her mouth is suddenly dry. Her gaze zeroes in on those plump black lips. But before she can do anything, Lexa darts forward to press a soft kiss to Clarke’s cheek. Her lashes flutter as her eyes shut of their own accord, overwhelmed. _Oh_.

“And I believe that is almost all of your traditions,” Lexa says proudly, lips curved as she lowers the paper and rises to her feet. “I’ve prepared a Christmas feast. I couldn’t find any cider, eggnog, or hot cocoa, though, so Sprit will have to suffice, I hope that is okay.”

Clarke dazedly rises to her own feet, face burning where Lexa had kissed her. “That’s more than okay, Lex. I’m honored. This is...so sweet of you. Thank you.”

Lexa blushes pale again before turning to busy herself with readying the food.

They share the meal before Clarke uses the last of her inhaler. It’s something Lexa cooked herself, and it’s delicious, the meat tender and juicy. It’s a little gamey, and reminds Clarke of duck back on Arkadia. Lexa says it’s a howl-horned featherfiend, apparently the closest alien bird in appearance to a turkey, which Lexa said she’d gone to Indra’s library to read up on Christmas traditions so she’d bought it specifically because of that. She beams when Clarke tells her it’s absolutely delicious and indeed reminiscent of Christmas feasts from home.

Afterwards, Clarke throws away her empty inhaler and puts her spacesuit back on. She does the embarrassing thing of laughing at her own lame joke when she says how she’s never eager to be a fishbowl head again, which Lexa does not understand considering there are no domestic fish on Polaris; the only fish here are huge and very much capable of eating you. Clarke shakes it off, ignoring Lexa’s playful grin as she follows her up the long spiral staircase to the top of the lighthouse so Lexa can show her how everything works.

But the moment she emerges from the hatch door, the air changes.

“Whoa!” 

There is even less gravity here than ground level; the moment Clarke takes a step forward, she begins floating up. She doesn’t have a cord to hold her down. Panicking that she’s going to slip right out the narrow windows and away into the sky, Clarke claws for a wall but she’s too far away.

“Clarke.” 

Her heart lodges itself into her throat at the sound of her name, always so soft leaving Lexa’s lips. Her eyes find Lexa’s of their own accord, which isn’t a difficult feat since Lexa has launched forward off the balls of her feet and is floating up toward Clarke, quickly enough that Clarke blinks and suddenly gray-green eyes are mere inches from her own.

“Stay calm,” Lexa murmurs, hands landing gently on Clarke’s shoulders. “Take a breath.”

Clarke tries to. It hovers, static and buzzing, in the caverns of her lungs. She can’t tear her gaze from Lexa’s; can’t stop from taking in the beautiful angles of her face, the smooth gray skin. 

“I can’t,” she stammers, breathless, gasping. “The air is so thin—” 

“You have your helmet on,” Lexa says, amused. Clarke’s gaze drops to the slight quirk of her full black lips. “You’re okay.”

Clarke blinks dazedly, forcing herself to take a slow drag of air. Inhale, exhale. She shifts her gaze up from Lexa’s lips to her eyes, finds Lexa watching her closely, a slight crease to her brow as though she’s trying to figure Clarke out. “I— I don’t want to float away.” But it’s hard to remember why; hard to recall the usual visions of her father, floating backwards, sucked into the abyss of dark matter and black holes, when such wide luminous eyes are right before her, fixed on her with such steady understanding.

“You won’t,” Lexa whispers. “Look.” Clarke follows the way Lexa gestures; realizes that they are enclosed in this circular room, glass wrapped around them. 

“Oh,” Clarke says lamely. She feels ashamed, suddenly, of how she reacted. “I’m—” 

“Don’t apologize,” Lexa says before she can. “Given what you went through, your response was understandable. But you’re safe here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Clarke’s heart wobbles in her chest and her lungs burn again. “I know,” she breathes. She swallows thickly. She looks at Lexa’s lips again. She _aches_. “Lexa…”

Lexa blinks, surprised, as though only finally clicking on to the way Clarke is looking at her. Clarke can see her throat dip as she swallows. 

“I feel like...I feel like I’ll die if I don’t kiss you.”

Lexa leans back to gape at her, aghast. “Why would you die?”

“I don’t mean it literally,” Clarke says desperately, though God, she _feels_ it literally. She swallows again as she tentatively cradles Lexa’s jaw in one gloved hand. Lexa’s lashes flutter as she seems to instinctively lean into the touch and Clarke burns to feel her skin to skin. “Lexa. Do you want to kiss me too?”

“Yes,” Lexa answers with no hesitation. Her eyes are hooded when she opens them again, looks at Clarke in such a way Clarke feels as though the very atmosphere is setting her aflame. “But we can’t.”

Clarke nearly cries out in protest, her heart dropping. “Why not?”

Lexa looks at her, slowly shifting one hand from Clarke’s shoulder to her helmet. Lexa strokes a finger over the glass. “Perhaps one day. When you don’t need a helmet to breathe.”

Ugh. Breathing. At Clarke’s grumpy face, Lexa laughs softly, and the sound wipes the disappointment away. Clarke sweeps her thumb out, tracing over the sharp curve of Lexa’s cheek, and smiles when Lexa does, her heart swelling.

“Raincheck, then,” Clarke whispers.

Lexa frowns, tilting her head, before leaning to crane her neck to peer out the window beyond Clarke. “There is no rain,” she says, puzzled, and even more so when Clarke bursts into laughter.

She sobers up as she meets Lexa’s eyes and electricity channels between them. Okay. _Fuck_ breathing.

Breathless with determination, Clarke drops her hands, fumbling for the button. Lexa’s eyes widen and she begins to protest, but Clarke is already snapping her helmet off. 

It’s strange, how different the air feels here. Though the effects of Raven’s respiratory inhalant is still in Clarke’s system, she already feels lightheaded as she grasps a handful of Lexa’s soft sweater and pulls her in close. Maybe it’s not the air that’s making her lightheaded, though. 

Her head spins when their lips meet. So _soft_ , she wants to groan. Instead she buries her gloved hands in Lexa’s hair, cradling the back of her head, allowing her helmet to float suspended in the air beside them. Their legs tangle as their mouths move together; Lexa kisses her slowly, tenderly, like she’s savoring every moment of this, and Clarke kisses back with just as much gentle intensity, shaking with restraint, resisting the urge to push forward like her ship rocketing toward the sun.

They break apart when Clarke finally runs out of air. Lexa’s eyes are dark and hooded, her lips swollen and kiss-bruised. Under her gaze, Clarke’s whole body lights up like the light stretched on endlessly above them. She swears she can see a whale in the distance, splashing through the galaxy and scattering stars in its wake. 

“Are you sure you have to go back to Arkadia so soon?” Lexa asks, voice low and raspy, and Clarke’s toes nearly curl beneath her where she floats. Raven said her ship would be ready to go tomorrow, but...

“I mean,” Clarke says breathlessly, her heart pounding. “I think I could stay a little later. You know. No rush.”

Lexa’s lips tilt up in an incredulously delighted smile, and Clarke returns it before kissing her again, and again, before finally Lexa insists, however reluctantly, that Clarke has to put her suit back on before she suffocates. Clarke thinks it might be worth it just to kiss Lexa a little longer, but she acquiesces, if only to bask in the glow of Lexa’s relieved smile.

* * *

The winter storms on Polaris move swiftly and can strike precipitously. At least, that’s what Lexa tells her when the sky suddenly grows dark on them. 

They’ve long retired from the top of the lighthouse— after they’d finally managed to stop kissing, Lexa had indeed shown Clarke how the light works and what Lexa’s process was every day for taking care of it, and how her systems worked for detecting incoming ships to light their path, and then they descended the staircase, and then Lexa helped herself to a couple of glasses of Sprit at Clarke’s insistence, since initially, Lexa had refused because Clarke was in her suit and couldn’t drink with her. The sky beyond the windows had turned dark so suddenly Clarke had looked around to make sure a few candles hadn’t gone out. Lexa explained to her how Polaris’s weather is temperamental and difficult to track, especially in the winter months when snowstorms could land without any warning at all. 

“So it’s going to snow?” Clarke queries, excited now as she gazes out the window. The clouds are strange here, large and puffy and outlined with electric blue. 

“Yes. It doesn’t usually snow a lot around this area. Travel is more dangerous because it’s just difficult to see. The snow obstructs your vision, especially when you’re driving a speeder.”

“Do you realize what this means, Lexa?” Clarke breathes, her helmet resting against the window as she strains to see out it. 

“What?”

“It’s the best thing that could happen on Christmas. We’d always pray the snow would hit on this day. It’s going to be a white Christmas!”

“Why would it be white?” Lexa says in confusion.

Clarke twists around to stare at her. “Is your snow not white?”

“No, of course not.”

“Oh. Well, what does it look like?”

“Like that,” Lexa says, nodding toward the window; Clarke whips around so fast her helmet whacks the glass, and then she gasps. 

The snow is glowing blue. 

“Wow. That’s so beautiful!” She watches it fall, and eventually Lexa comes over to join her, climbing onto the couch, legs curled up beneath her, pressing close to Clarke as she gazes out the window. Clarke turns to look at her and wishes more than anything she could take her suit off; she would give anything to kiss Lexa again right now. “Can we go out in it? I mean, is it safe?”

Lexa nods. 

Clarke grins, excited. “I want to make a snowman.”

“Why would you make them? They are perfectly capable of making themselves.”

 _“What?”_

But before Clarke’s very eyes, she sees what Lexa means. Parts of the snow gathers into a clump and arranges itself into a vaguely humanoid figure; it stands on two legs and pats itself down as though to ensure everything is there, and then it walks off on two stumpy legs. Several others do the same thing, until a crowd of them is walking away. 

“They’re a menace,” Lexa says lightly. “Every now and then we’ll get so much snow they’ll be larger, and they’ll be strong enough to walk all the way to town. They crave the cold so they break into Anya’s bar and try to take over her walk-in freezer. After the snowstorm moves on, they fall apart and flood the whole freezer and turn the floor to ice. Anya nearly broke her tail once when she walked in and slipped. Luckily she was able to land on all fours, but still.”

Clarke watches them all shuffle off, presumably to go annoy Anya, with awe. Eventually she drags Lexa outside and they have a glowing snowball fight that Clarke spectacularly loses; her suit is so bulky it makes her incredibly slow-moving, and she’s still not used to this planet’s gravity so on more than one occasion she pushes off the ground too hard to sprint and Lexa’s ducklings, which have long joined the fight (all save for GUS, who apparently loathes the cold weather), have to shoot cords out to save her. Lexa giggles each time and it’s so contagious. Clarke teaches her how to make snow angels, and then they just lay there, Clarke gazing up to watch the glowing snowflakes fall like slow-moving stars, landing on her helmet. It’s so beautiful she could cry. Especially when she looks over and sees Lexa laying beside her. Clarke holds her hand, and Lexa’s smile has her heart _aching_ to kiss it. 

Eventually they retire back to the lighthouse, and sit by the faya to warm. 

“Well, uh...it doesn’t look like the storm will be letting up anytime soon.” Clarke turns, gripping the windowsill with one gloved hand. “Maybe I should stay here for the night?” she suggests breathlessly. Her confidence falters when Lexa just looks at her, gaze as steady as ever. “If— if that’s okay.”

“But you ran out of Raven’s inhaler.”

Shit. Clarke deflates. That’s right. Well...perhaps her night won’t be quite like she was hoping, but she’d still love spending time with Lexa. “I have my suit.”

“Will it last you through the night?” When Clarke nods, Lexa presses her lips together in a smirk. “Clarke, are you sure? Because if you stay here, we’re not sleeping together yet.” 

_Yet._ Clarke’s mouth goes dry as heat pulses in her stomach at the words. Lexa smirks like she knows exactly the effect those words had on her, and laughs when Clarke shoots her a playfully withering look. 

“Don’t look at me like that. You need oxygen more than you need...anything else.”

“Speak for yourself,” Clarke mutters, and yelps when Lexa throws a pillow at her. 

“You can sleep on the couch again or you can share my bed, but only for sleeping.”

As much as Clarke yearns to curl up in bed with Lexa...it would be like torture right now, too. By Lexa’s expression, she understands that, too.

Clarke groans. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

She flops down, smiling faintly at the way Lexa chuckles. Lexa blows out several candles before making her way back towards her bedroom, GUS waddling along behind her. 

Lexa pauses in the door frame, turning back to offer Clarke a soft smile. “Merry Chrysler, Clarke.”

Clarke smiles back, warmth flooding her chest. “Happy Holigays, Lexa.”

* * *

It’s that night while she’s struggling to find sleep that it takes a turn.

Raven had just messaged her on the instant communicator (the one she’d let Clarke borrow to let her mother know she was getting her ship repaired before she headed out— her mother didn’t need to know she was actually buying a new ship entirely) to let her know that her ship was ready to go. Clarke stares up at the ceiling, her head churning with thoughts. She’d told Lexa she was planning to stay a few days later. But…

Raven’s voice keeps floating around her head. 

_“Lexa’s a good person, and she’s been through a lot.”_

_“I just don’t want to see her getting hurt, you know?”_

Neither does Clarke. And that’s the issue. 

She’s so _busy_. Her work as a scientist keeps her busy enough, let alone her part-time job space diving, which her mother doesn’t even know about. Clarke doesn’t have time to keep visiting a planet way outside her own solar system just to visit someone who she’s not even sure would _want_ to date her. Lexa had said she liked being alone, and she’s content. Clarke is just an unknown, chaotic element that entered her life with a fiery crash.

_“I don’t want to see her getting hurt.”_

Clarke’s stomach twists. What is she _doing?_ What has she been playing at, indulging in this?

She thinks of Lexa’s soft smile, of her sweet droids and this little home she made herself here. She clearly hasn’t been with anyone since Costia. The last girl Lexa was with died, and now Clarke’s inserting herself into her world and all she’s going to do is leave more wreckage behind. She can’t do this. But God, she wants to.

She wants to stay here. She wants to spend days, weeks, months learning Lexa’s smile and everything about her. She wants to quit the job she hates and ask Lexa if she wants to come travel with her. She wants to teach her how to space-dive, to watch the wonder crawl across her face the first time she sees a whale gracefully diving through the galaxy. She wants to hear her laugh when she tries to teach her how to milk a spacejelly. She wants to learn and grow and live with her.

And that is _terrifying_.

Clarke lies awake for a long, long time with that fear, watching out the window as the glowing snow slows to a trickle and then stops falling altogether. She has never been so filled with want before. She wants to stay. She wants to breathe, to take off her suit and crawl into bed with Lexa. It’s not even the sex that she craves (though God, she craves that too; Lexa is gorgeous and Clarke wants to learn all the ways she can make her fall apart), it’s the mere closeness— she wants to lie next to her and just look at her, to trace the lines of her face, to kiss those soft lips, to breathe in the sweet scent of her star-strewn hair. 

It scares her so much because what if Lexa doesn’t want that? What if Clarke is just disrupting her life? What if she’s just being selfish, and she needs to return to the real world, to her real life, and leave Lexa to be happy and whole in her own. 

Maybe it’s the right thing to do.

_“I don’t want to see her getting hurt.”_

And she won’t be.

Clarke takes a shaky breath, cupping her hand over the lizard-shaped lump on her chest. Picasso purrs against her hollow heart. 

* * *

“Clarke.”

Clarke grunts in her sleep, swatting away the hand gently shaking her shoulder.

“Clarke.”

_“GRIFFIN!”_

Clarke jolts awake with a strangled gasp. She blinks blearily at Lexa, who stands before her, bemused. GUS is perched on the couch armrest, staring at Clarke; he quacks inquisitively when she just looks between him and Lexa.

Lexa’s lips twist in amusement as Raven’s voice crackles out of the speakers again, in a handheld communicator Lexa offers to Clarke. Wishing she could rub her eyes through her helmet, Clarke blinks again and takes the communicator.

_“Finally. Sheesh, you sleep like the dead. Listen, I know you said you were gonna hang out for a few days, but, I have your ship ready to go. It gets really foggy after snowstorms here, so unless you want to be stranded for a week, you might want to get a move on.”_

Clarke’s breath catches as her stomach drops. She glances up at Lexa, finds her watching her stoicly, her face carefully blank.

“Um. Yeah, okay,” Clarke rasps, voice still thick with sleep. She sits up straighter on the couch. “Uh.” She glances at Lexa again. “I’ll head over to the shipyard straightaway, then. And Raven— thank you so much.”

_“Eh, it was nothing. It was good meeting you, Griff. May we meet again.”_

Clarke’s lips twitch at the phrase; she hasn’t heard it in a while, not since her last trip to Arkadia. “May we meet again.”

Raven clicks off the communicator, and Clarke looks up at Lexa, who just watches her expectantly.

“You have to leave,” she eventually says, when Clarke is silent. It’s not framed as a question, but Clarke responds with a nod anyway. Lexa echoes it, disappointment etched into every line on her pale gray face.

“Um. Lexa, listen.” Clarke takes a breath. “I—”

“You don’t have to say anything, Clarke,” Lexa says quietly. She straightens up, taking a step back, placing the communicator delicately atop the fireplace. The blue flame crackles quietly. “I understand. You have to go back. They’re your people.”

Clarke bites her lip, looking at Lexa, chest fit to bursting with things she has no idea how to say. 

_She’s a good person and she’s been through a lot. I don’t want to see her getting hurt._

Clarke wants Lexa to ask her to stay. But Lexa won’t, because Lexa likes being alone. Because Lexa likes her life. Clarke doesn’t need to mess that up for her. 

So she nods. “Thank you,” she says, her voice soft. “These past few days...they’ve been amazing. I’m...I’m so glad I met you.”

Lexa gives her a smile that does not quite meet her eyes, and offers her hand. “Likewise, Clarke Griffin.”

Clarke gets to her feet, patting GUS’s head before she takes the hand Lexa offered, but rather than shaking her hand Lexa instead grips her forearm. 

“May we meet again,” she says wryly. Clarke’s breath catches again. She must have learned it from Raven.

God. If Clarke wasn’t wearing her suit, she would have kissed her. As she was, she had little choice but to yank Lexa forward into a desperate hug, and cling to her tightly for a long while, before Lexa finally pulls back and offers to drive her to the shipyard. Clarke nods and spends a few minutes bidding all the droids goodbye; guilt pulls on her heartstrings when GUS waddles after her, quacking insistently, and Clarke pats his smooth metal head one last time before grabbing her bag of items and heading out the door. She slips behind Lexa on her speeder and clutches at her waist one last time, closing her eyes and holding her tight.

In no time at all, they’ve arrived, and Clarke has to say goodbye to her all over again. Their hug lasts longer this time, but eventually, Clarke manages to pull back. 

“Don’t be a stranger,” Lexa says with a sad smile. “You know where we are now. Feel free to come visit.”

“I will,” Clarke says, voice shaking too bad for her to trust herself to say anymore. She dips her head and waves when Lexa does, and then watches as Lexa swings a long leg over her speeder, waves one last time, and zooms off. It’s already foggy, so in only seconds Lexa is swallowed up by it, leaving Clarke standing before her new ship, her eyes stinging and her heart heavy.

It was the right thing to do, she reminds herself as she goes inside and readies for takeoff. 

(but then why does it feel so _wrong?)_

* * *

It’s so foggy Clarke can barely see as she rockets away from the Dead Zone. It doesn’t help that her eyes are filled with tears she’s unable to wipe away, at least not until she’s entered the new atmosphere and can turn her air filters on so she can shed her suit. Picasso seems grumpy as he curls up on the control panel, eyeing Clarke with a dirty look as though he’s peeved that he’s no longer warm and comfy in the chest of her suit. Clarke swallows down the need to apologize to him, too.

What a shitty day. She’s supposed to be excited right now. Eager to get back home already. But she’s not. She feels...everything about this just feels _wrong_.

She decides to pull out her communicator cord from her bag of things she’d managed to salvage. She puts her ship on autopilot, sparing a moment to stare at the retreating sphere of Polaris as she sails forward through the galaxy. It’s nothing but swirls of black from the sand and the sea, brown from the plains, and white-blue from the misty fog enveloping the whole planet at this point. Crazy to think Lexa is nothing more than a speck there now.

Clarke already misses her.

She tries to shake it off and digs through her bag, but she frowns when she feels things she definitely didn’t put there herself. She pulls out her canvas and box of utensils, her cord and her keepsakes— those she did put there. But then she pulls out a music disc, and a small thermos, and a small folded up piece of thick Polaris paper. 

_Some Sprit and tunes for your journey out,_ Lexa had wrote, the words shaky and uncertain— Trigedasleng wasn’t ever written, so Clarke was sure she wasn’t used to writing at all, let alone in Arkadian. _I hope we will meet again. I have a feeling I won’t ever be the same after meeting you, and that’s something I’ll be forever grateful for._

With trembling fingers, Clarke slides the music unit into the slot on the control panel. After a second, it begins playing. Clarke’s eyes sting as Lexa’s favorite singer begins crooning, an angelic voice filling up her whole ship.

“Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” Clarke mutters, shaking her head. She smashes the button on the wall to turn her air filters on and pops her helmet off so she can angrily swipe at the tears on her face. “What the fuck am I doing?”

What _is_ she doing? 

It’s not every day you crash land on an unknown planet and fall for the mysterious and absolutely beautiful lightkeeper and her adorable droids. Is Clarke really going to give up what she’s been given for...what? A job she hates and the insecurity that Lexa might not feel the same way? There’s only one way to know how Lexa feels. And that’s to _ask_ her.

This was every bit as scary as how it feels to be perched on the edge of your landing deck, prepared to dive into the galaxy simply for the _chance_ of a _glimpse_ of a pod of whales or a bloom of space jellies. All Clarke has to do now is take the leap.

The first thing she does is switch the ship off autopilot and turn it around, so suddenly and violently that items tumble to the ground and Picasso hisses in annoyance until he realizes the Sprit has spilled and he lunges off the panel to go lick it up. The second thing is picking up her communicator. Her mother answers after only two rings.

“Mom,” Clarke calls out to her over the rush of the machinery as she increases speed, “I love you, but it’s going to be a while before I make it there. I met a girl.”

Her mother’s voice warbles over the speakers. “You— what?”

“I met a girl!”

“Well that’s good? Good for you,” her mother says, clearly confused, “But where are you?”

“I’m trying to find her. I gotta go, I’m about to go through a meteor storm and I might lose you. But I just wanted to let you know— that, and that I’m quitting my job.”

_“What?”_

“Yeah, I just don’t enjoy it. I’m going to do spacediving instead. I love it.”

“Clarke—”

“I’ll talk to you later. I love you!”

_“Clarke—”_

The communicator cuts out, and Clarke grins. It’s like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders, and knowing that she’s going to see Lexa again?

She’s never felt freer.

She punches the radio on and finds a tune. She settles on Celine Dion’s _I Drove All Night_ , and grips the wheel tighter as she sails across the galaxies, nothing but Lexa on her mind.

* * *

Less than a minute into her descent and Clarke realizes she did not think this through.

The Dead Zone is foggy; Raven wasn’t exaggerating. Not only that, but clearly another winter storm has hit, so there’s vividly glowing snow _everywhere_. Clarke cannot see a single thing as she sails down through the atmosphere. Her heart is caught in her throat as she realizes with a strike of panic that there’s a very real chance she could crash into something or someone— oh, God, what if she sails into the lighthouse? What if she hurts Lexa?

She pulls the wheel down, intending to go up, but it’s so foggy now she has no idea where she even is, which way is up and which is down. Picasso senses her fear and crawls into the chest of her suit, though she’s yet to put her helmet on, and then down even lower, burrowing for more warmth and safety, curling up over her stomach. Clarke is really beginning to panic now, but then the fog directly before her brightens, as if a light is behind it— and a moment later, a droid duckling emerges from the gloom, its wheel gear eyes lit up and bright. Clarke shouts with laughter when GUS opens his beak, though she cannot hear his quack. His wings flap madly as he flies past her and then circles around her ship to fly directly before her, guiding her.

Soon enough another light shines, this one bright as the sun though not quite as blinding. Clarke safely flies past the lighthouse, following GUS to an empty stretch of black sands near it. She lands her ship, perhaps a bit roughly in her impatience, but safely nonetheless. Her heart hammers as she throws on her helmet and punches the door open. 

The first thing she sees is glowing snowflakes drifting to the black sands. The second is GUS, landing right near the ship door to quack proudly at her. Clarke hurries down a few steps, pausing to pat his head and murmur how great a job he did, and that’s all the time she can spare before she makes to rush off— except then she sees a third thing. A figure, looming out of the fog as it rushes toward her. Clarke’s heart leaps. A beat later, Lexa emerges from the mist, and Clarke throws herself forward, sprinting to meet her, floating up into the air with the force of her pushing off the ground, but before she can float away, Lexa rises from the ground and catches her out of the sky.

They collide like galaxies, sand shifting like dark matter and glowing snow scattering like stars. Clarke wraps her arms around Lexa’s neck and Lexa wraps her own around her waist, the both of them laughing as the momentum spins them around. Lexa has barely even set her down before Clarke is grasping her wrist and tugging her with her back toward the ship. Lexa’s laugh is smothered against Clarke’s lips a moment later, once she’s slammed the door shut and hit her air filter on and ripped her helmet off. They kiss so desperately they lose their footing and slam down onto the metal floor, but they don’t care.

Until Clarke’s straddled Lexa and Lexa feels something strange. She pulls back to frown quizzically at Clarke, and then smirks. 

“Is that a space lizard in your pants or are you just happy to see me?”

Picasso had crawled down into Clarke’s pants during the landing, it seems. Clarke snorts, grinning as she shrugs off her suit and Picasso scurries up to his place on the control panel. Lexa’s own grin is wiped away as Clarke pulls off her shirt. Her face is pale, her pupils dark and blown wide.

“Oh,” she says lamely, and Clarke’s grin broadens. 

She’s never slept with a nightblood before. Clarke assumes she functions similarly to a human, but still, after a few minutes when the air is heavy and thick and electric between them, and their clothes are scattered all over the ship, Clarke feels the need to ask.

“Can you come?” Clarke asks, voice strained, hungry. Hoping.

Long fingers sift through her hair, curl and tug. Lexa’s gaze is as intense as ever, fixed on Clarke’s lips. “Why don’t you find out?” she asks lowly, and yes, okay; Clarke can do that. 

* * *

When Lexa chants her name three times in a row, Clarke brushes her smirk along her jaw. “I thought I told you that’s not my name.”

“ _Clarke_ ,” Lexa half-heartedly chastises, before gasping again.

“That’s better.”

* * *

The sky is no longer filled with glowing snowflakes later, as they lay slumped together on the floor of the ship as their breathing returns to normal and their heart rates steady. 

“I quit my job,” Clarke tells her, still somewhat breathless as she presses her lips to Lexa’s chest, just above her heart. 

“Really?” Lexa says in pleasant surprise. Her lips curve as she hums. “That’s impressive. I’m proud of you for doing what you needed to make you happy.”

“You make me happy,” Clarke whispers. Even after everything they just did, her cheeks warm as she glances up at Lexa; she relaxes under her warm, lazy smile. “I was thinking I could stick around here for a while before I pick up my next commission.”

Lexa hums again, her smile widening. “I’m very partial to that idea.”

“And I was thinking...maybe you’d like to travel with me a little? Once I get one.”

They both still, and Clarke’s heart flutters and thrums in her chest as Lexa just looks at her, utterly unreadable. And then she melts with relief and joy when Lexa blinks, and a slow smile crawls across her face, from ear to pale ear.

“I’d love that,” she whispers, and Clarke nods. 

“Me too,” she breathes, nuzzling Lexa’s neck, kissing her softly when Lexa hugs her. “Can I tell you a secret? I really like you.”

“I like you too, Clarke.”

“No, Lex, I mean, I really, _really_ like you.”

“That isn’t a secret. Even GUS knows that. Look.”

Clarke twists around to see the droid perched on the nose of her ship, watching them through the window. Even though he’s technically a robot with no expression, Clarke swears she can see the judgment in his eyes. 

“Oh God. Did we traumatize him?”

Lexa shrugs, the ghost of a smirk on her lips now. 

“I can’t believe he flew,” Clarke marvels; it only just sank into her. “Did you know he was going to do that? Did you send him to get me?”

Lexa shook her head, wild star-strewn hair fanned out behind her. “He must have overheard me and took matters into his own- er, wings. I was talking with Raven, trying to figure out if she had access to your ship’s communicator; I regretted not confessing my feelings for you before you left. At the time, I thought it was better, I didn’t want to hold you back.”

“I hid mine too,” Clarke reveals. She tucks a strand of her own hair behind her ear and startles when she realizes there are twinkling stars floating in her own now too, buried within the gold. She smiles, especially when Lexa looks at her like she’s a work of art, and strokes her hand through her hair and then over her cheek. “Then I decided I just needed to take a leap of faith.”

“I’m glad you did,” Lexa says. She leans in for a kiss, the tip of her nose dragging softly across Clarke’s.

“Me too,” Clarke breathes, eyes fluttering shut, her heart swelling as she presses their lips together.

She kisses Lexa softly, slowly, with all the time in the world. Outside of their spaceship, the sands shift and the onyx sea laps the black shores and the light circles around slowly from the top of the lighthouse; beyond that, planets hang in the sky and the universe keeps turning.

And Clarke knows she’s finally found her place in it.

**Author's Note:**

> God, is there anything better than imagining Clarke rushing across the galaxy in a spaceship blasting out Celine's I Drove All Night to get her girl? What a bop, honestly.


End file.
